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GDP and Its Enemies

Gross domestic product was constructed to count things, not services. But would what a better measure be?

By

Roger Lowenstein

June 15, 2016 6:31 p.m. ET

The “Great Invention” of Ehsan Masood’s title is the formula for Gross Domestic Product, the universally familiar—but poorly understood—method that countries use to tote up their national incomes.

The phrase was coined in the 1930s at the U.S. Department of Commerce, which by the end of the 20th century was celebrating GDP as a wonder of modern man, or at least of modern government. Global economies were growing, and counting growth did not seem controversial.